Why We Support the Hague Declaration on Planetary Security

The climate is a planet-wide fabric of energy exchange. Its dynamics determine the conditions in which we make our varied imaginative hard-won attempts at human thriving. The destabilization of major climate patterns is creating conditions for extreme drought, unprecedented storms, winter wildfires, record precipitation, sea level rise, coastal erosion, and other threats to food and water supplies, infrastructure and institutions, and to the resilience of biodiverse life-sustaining ecosystems.

Accelerating climate change poses a direct and unprecedented threat to the underpinnings of human civilization. Specifically, the erosion of reliable supports for food and water supplies, the spread of vector-borne diseases to new latitudes, and other spiraling drivers of economic degradation significantly raise the risk of mass migration and armed conflict.

On December 12 and 13, we joined the One Planet Summit and Co-convened a Working Dialogue on Resilience Intel in Paris. Meanwhile, the third annual Planetary Security Conference met in The Hague to discuss ways to take action on the linked risks of climate change and security.

Our founder, Joseph Robertson, has signed The Hague Declaration on Planetary Security, because we support this emerging community’s ongoing work to turn knowledge into action to build resilience in the face of climate-related drivers of human insecurity. Each of the six action areas outlined in The Hague Declaration on Planetary Security has the potential to save tens of thousands, even millions of lives.

The Declaration calls for:

Creating an Institutional Home for Climate Security

Coordinating Migration and Climate Change Responses

Promoting Urban Resilience

Supporting Joint Risk Assessment in Lake Chad

Strengthening Climate and Conflict Sensitive Development in Mali

Supporting Sustainable Water Strategies in Iraq

As the Preamble says “Successfully addressing climate-related security challenges requires knowledge sharing, partnerships, and getting out of separate silos.” This is the work Geoversiv was created to do, seeking new additional insight for climate-smart future-building across multiple areas of action.

We are working to build the Peace Synapse graph of climate, peace and security knowledge relationships into an interactive evolving infographic platform to trace and inform climate security thinking and preparedness.

Resilience Intel is being developed to track, grade, aggregate and upgrade the climate intelligence of finance and spending across the whole economy.

Overall, our programs will provide action-oriented pathways to assessing, planning for and confronting the major challenges related to climate destabilization and the transition to climate-smart practices.

In 2018, we will begin a coordinated process of multidisciplinary reporting, from across all of our initiatives and programs, to support the building and sharing of knowledge related to systemic and human resilience. Through the Ocean Neutrality Initiative, our ACCESS to GOOD program, the mapping of targeted Living Future Strategies, and the 2018 Global Status Update event, we will work to deepen the general understanding of climate security concerns.

The Hague Declaration on Planetary Security comes at a crucial moment in world history, where we now have clear evidence about the rapidly escalating risks posted by unchecked climate disruption. This is the moment to begin building the collaborative structures for ensuring no part of the world is left without the information and the means to plan for and remain safe and prosperous in the face of nonlinear climate-related security impacts.

Resilience Intel is a comprehensive climate-smart finance aggregating effort, built through a multilevel multilateral cooperative coalition, to track, grade, aggregate and roadmap the upgrading of climate action spending across whole economies.